I first discovered Iman’s YouTube channel during one of my research sessions and was immediately struck by her view of the world. It is one filled with curiosity, intention, and a deep devotion for analogue. The way she captures her daily rituals feels almost like storytelling, where every object and fleeting moment holds a deeper significance with so much joy. We are grateful for the opportunity to share more of her story. - Eunice
BK: Iman, thank you for spending time with us. We always love starting at the beginning to ask where your story originates. What shaped you, and what parts of your background feel essential to who you are today?
Iman: Thank you for thinking of me! My story in itself is connected to paper, but in a way that goes beyond white lined notebooks and ink stains and the world of paper as it relates to writing and journaling. The world of paper I think of is the one of maps – geographical journaling, if I could name it as its own small category. When I think of my story I think of an Atlas. I used to have one when I was very young, maybe eight years old. It was a spherical globe of the world illuminated from within, a paper map that was a warm blue and green hued lamp. I would look at this globe and see all these cities and names and lines and lakes. A map feels very intrinsic to my identity – both made of paper and drawn like a painting with its dotted lines and watercolor washes, but also telling of a story in chapters. An archive of experience. My family is Moroccan. Both my mom and my dad are Moroccan, but I was born in the Italian Dolomites. It’s this beautiful place called South Tyrol, where the air smells like pure milk and the mountains fill every space on the sky. It’s a small region right at the border between Austria and Italy, so I grew up speaking Italian and German but also Arabic at home. A week before I turned eighteen, my family moved to the capital city of Canada – sweet sweet Ottawa. This year I have lived in Stockholm for my graduate studies in political science. My story is intrinsic to geography, making this big and small world my own and drawing my life story within a map that is the collection of all my journals. My North African upbringing, going to Arabic school on Sundays and keeping Arabic learning notebooks. My Italian nationality, this precious burgundy red passport shaped like a small leather journal. My Canadian life captured in digital photography and video recordings. I can’t tell my story or share my love of paper if not with a map in hand.
BK: One of the most fascinating things about you is your love for what many would now call “vintage” digital devices. Do you remember the first one that truly captured your heart? Was there a specific moment when this admiration began or was it something gradual?
Iman: It was a typewriter! I can remember as if it was yesterday, but it must have been seven years ago. In Italy there is no such thing as a thrift shop as known in North America, at least years ago. What we have instead is the “mercatino delle pulci”, the flea market – which in my small town happened every first Saturday of the month in a very green park near the historical center. I remember seeing this beautiful pale olive green Olivetti typewriter and buying it for 5 euros. I took the bus and brought it home, as heavy as it was. I am not sure if a typewriter even counts as being digital, but to me it does. A so-called vintage digital device can be anything that is a single purpose technological tool. An iPod, an mp3, a record player. A typewriter, a desktop, a keyboard. I have always been enamored by technology as vehicle for art! When I was in elementary school, because I was so clumsy (and still terribly am) my mom didn’t trust me with the family camera – back then when cameras where a prized and precious luxury object. So, she would send me off to school field trips with a disposable film camera. A Kodak, or a Fujifilm. To me, this little object was like the equivalent of a bike or a motorcycle. Using a camera, or a typewriter, or even a field recorder as I do these days years and years later; it still feels like biking around. It’s a way to experience the world, without your shoes touching the ground and with each color blurring into another. My love for technology has always been present, since the early days and in so many ways. I am not sure why or how – all I know is that life seen through the lens of a camera or words through a typewriter font make me feel as if the scene captured, the melody in the air, the sentence on paper is fleeting and beautiful. It all becomes something else, escaping what it is. Cinema.
BK: There are people who appreciate analogue living, and then there are those who truly live and breathe it. You feel like the latter. Has this always been instinctive for you, or was there a moment in life that brought you back to paper and slow living?
Iman: Not at all – this story began around 2023. I have always been very intrigued by older technology and I have been journaling since elementary school. I used to have one of those diaries with a vocal lock! But, I made the decision to be more conscious of my journaling when I decided to live a life of digital minimalism. I read the book by Cal Newport – “Digital Minimalism” and my life was truly changed overnight. I had felt disconnected from my life the more I was using my phone and platforms like Instagram, so I decided to regain connection to myself through old school blogging on Tumblr and a predetermined analog ecosystem I could come up with season to season. I read the book, I deleted all socials, I created my blog and I made a map on Scapple (a software I adore and recommend) figuring out how I could replace each thing I used my phone for with either a journal or a digital device that was “quieter”. The notes app became a Filofax mini, and everything else took on more of a physical form. I wanted my screen time to be lower, my brain fog to lift and for me to archive my life in a way I could touch with my hands. No risks of being logged out by a profile, my journal is always with me. It was all very deliberate! It was a matter of background noise, my days were filled with a bee-like buzzing I could not turn off. Now my bus rides are about the landscape outside the window or the book in my hands, not the cacophony of The Phone. I talk to my sister or my friends on the phone, take a few pictures of my coffee cup, maybe check the weather and then put it in my pocket. I want my life to be bigger than my pocket, as big as the outside world that I can see.
BK: We’ve noticed you change your analogue systems seasonally. Could you walk us through what you’re currently using? What planners, devices, notebooks, or rituals are carrying you through this chapter, and how do they support your daily life?
Iman: I do very much live a seasonal life. I like to think of myself as a tree, a fig one, and this image helps me navigate my growth but also times of loss. Seasons of rebirth and seasons of productivity. Chapters of change. I am now a Master’s student and in general also very academically oriented, which sometimes means that I can get carried away with my studies. Having a seasonal approach to life for me means seeing rest as natural, I signal to myself ways to change and be one with the chapter I am living in. As I always say, there are the seasons of nature but one can also live according to the seasons of life. Seasons of energy, of patience, of building, of connecting, of resilience, of exploration. It’s more than just fall, winter, spring and summer – but I love to use these four to reflect, as timely chances or alarm reminders to ask myself where I am and recalibrate for the season. Currently, my analog ecosystem is built around my journals, my camera and field recorder, and a seasonally curated bookshelf. I make sure I always have my journals picked out for the season. Since this spring is my last semester of this first Master’s year, I have been using my Taschenbegleiter. It’s a medium size in the cognac finish. Beautiful orange leather! Sweet university companion, my academic journal. I have also been enamoured by both my planner and everyday carry journal ever since I found out about how the Midori MD journals can perfectly fit into my Filofaxes Maldens. I love my pocket digital camera, my silver Ricoh GR ii. I love my field recorder, my eBay found SONY pcm-M10. I love digital journaling, whether it’s taking a picture or recording a voice note entry on a walk. This season is about journaling and photography and creating an analog and digital archive of my life, but it’s also a season that is very much about reading and annotated reading specifically. Besides my studies and miscellaneous admin lists or memory-keeping moments captured in my journals, I am experimenting with active reading as another way to enjoy books – to almost make of a book a sort of journal in itself. Memories that resurface, connections to quotes, creative ideas. It’s a work in progress. I carry with me a small Rhodiarama leather notepad in the size n. 1o in this pretty anise color, and jot down whatever comes to mind when reading hoping each note to become an index card about my current read. Last spring I was into digital audio players, this time around I am more interested in carrying a poetry collection or a magazine like W or L’Etiquette. It’s a season of inspiration!
BK: You once shared that the best postcard from traveling is a book. We loved that sentiment. Is there a particular book you found while traveling that now holds a special memory? What makes it unforgettable to you?
Iman: The summer before I moved from Italy to Canada, I went on a trip to the sea with my childhood best friend Sofia and her mom Cristina. We were like sisters, me and her. She with her dark blonde hair and extravagant attitude and me with my brown curls and very shy demeanor. We completed each other, we grew up together just a few streets away. As a goodbye the three of us went to a coastal city in northern Italy – the drive was not too far from our beloved Dolomites and yet the landscape was completely different from the mountains I was so used to. Saline scent. White rocks. It was beautiful. I remember that there I bought a copy of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky and I spent the days on the beach reading it in the shade. It’s a vivid memory not only because of the significance of the trip, but also because I think of that first postcard as the start to my seasonal approach to reading. The first line reads: “On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.” I remember the pleasure of reading something that took place in the summer as I myself was living through a summer of some surreal kind. It was July when I first read it, and something about that made reading the book so vivid. The sugary smell of ice cream all around, the sound of grasshoppers. It taught me the beauty of reading a book at the right time. Now it’s my favorite book.
BK: You’ve playfully used the phrase “touch paper” as take on “touch grass.” In a world that moves at such a faced-paced speed, why does recording life on paper still matter?
Iman: It matters because it’s both a practice of presence and a gift to oneself. At once, through recording my life on paper, I step away for a moment from the cacophony that screens and sounds can create. I can be one with myself, a solitude needed for growth and self reflection and introspection. Sometimes we need to talk to ourselves in silence, a quiet conversation with oneself is necessary like drinking a glass of water. It’s necessary like sleeping, like a long good night of sleep. In a world with so many voices and faces, one can forget their own. Journaling is in essence a practice of self understanding, self building, self creating. These are my thoughts, my ideas, my wishes, my fears, my desires, my dreams, my memories. Naming what one does in a day, a list of things to do, an old school diary entry. These are things that piece by piece create our sense of self, like each letter in a name. And in doing so, you create a library that goes beyond a password. You gift yourself – yourself. Creating a library of your growth is a beautiful mode of documenting, because it signals to you that every day matters and that life is so beautiful. It’s a reminder that everything is special, no such thing as the mundane. A journal is my reminder that my thoughts are worth capturing, and if we all are the saturation of all of our thoughts then this reminder seeps in deeply. I see my journals and I see an invite to listen to my intuitions, to follow my dreams, to take care of my time on this Earth. I see an archive of my days passing by, a collection of each moment I lived big and small that has brought me where I am today. Journaling makes of life poetry.
BK: Was there a moment during your studies when you doubted yourself? What helped you move through that season?
Iman: Absolutely, rejection is a very good friend of mine. Scholarships, programs, universities, submissions – you name it I have been rejected from. I have doubted myself when I got rejected from the only university that I applied for in Canada for my Master’s. All the other universities I applied for where far far away in Europe. When I got rejected, I felt dizzy. It was painful, but exactly what I needed. First, I realized that I cannot value myself after my academic success, not even my grades and not a missed acceptance. Every time I have received a grade I was not happy with or have faced hardship or rejection in my studies, it was a beautiful reminder that I am more than a student. It’s a part of my identity but not the entirety of my identity. When I received this one big rejection, I was not only reminded that I am more than a grade, it was also difficult because it brought along greater uncertainty. Hardship in my studies often came with the reminder to grow my identity outside of my academic achievements, but this time it was something more. The rejection was not only that, but also a chance for open possibility. It forced me to take a greater risk, move abroad and go further away into the unknown. I took the uncertainty and the doubt and the fear as a chance to be brave and follow what my path was unfolding into beyond the control of my hands, just as it was. A moment of doubt is a great moment for letting go – becoming light, weightless. Observing, open. I thought to myself – “I am meant to have another experience, another challenge”. And so it was, not everything is within our control, but what I am in control of is the scope of my eye. What do I see? In every rejection, in every hardship, in every doubt there is a split second of time in which I can look elsewhere and let my gaze wander. It’s something that happens rarely, it’s painful but precious.
BK: Your YouTube channel is a unique breath of fresh air. When you film, what are you hoping viewers feel?
Iman: Thank you! I hope they see art in everything. Journaling is a great love of mine, but also reading and studying and photography and that is because those are all kaleidoscopes of life. Journaling allows one to capture everyday life or personal thoughts. Reading and studying are practices of curiosity and learning. Photography captures the beauty of landscapes, of moments. I hope that with my channel they see the cinema that is everyday life. That is the point of creating and curating an everyday carry, or a wardrobe, or a journaling ecosystem – to find poetry in the present.
BK: We know fashion is also a huge part of your life. If you were to create your own fashion label, what would you name it and what would it stand for?
Iman: What a wonderful question! I would name it something in Italian as an ode to my
childhood – or maybe “Marlene”, like the apple variety that comes from the mountain I grew up in.
Where to find Iman:
Website: imantopia.com
Blog: imanbenerrabeh.com
YouTube: @imanbenerrabeh
Newsletter: imanbenerrabeh
Portfolio: 26082002.com
❖ Bk Artifacts Featured: